It was my understanding from what totallymaxed has said in the past, that although 0710 will not be able to play BD/HDDVD directly from the optical media due to the encryption schemes, that the scheme 0710 would use is to rip the content to hard drive, use a local decryption system and have the LMCE box do the work, then use mplayer to play it.

The only restrictions that seemed to be apparent when this was last discussed was the CPU power needed to process all that data, the disk space required (although it only need be temporary, I guess) and the network bandwidth needed to stream it to MDs - certainly Gb required...

Is that right Andrew? So encrypted (normal) HD DVDs and BD should be fine? Certainly the copy protection keys have been circumvented since May last year, look at SlySofts AnyDVD product.

Final question, Andrew - if this is how it will work, will LMCE allow you to start playing the ripped movie before it has finished ripping, or do you need to wait for the whole disk to finish before starting? How long does that typically take?

Yes Collin you are correct the HD discs have to be copied to the Core first... they cannot be played direct from the HD optical drive. You cannot commence playback until the copy has completed. A special HD tool is provided to allow you to copy the discs to the Core. This tool currently does not reproduce the discs original menu system... but all video content on the original Disc is reproduced. The HD Disc copies are 40-50Gig

To be clear: what you're describing is my putting a standard Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) disc I bought on Amazon, like Blade Runner, into a BD drive on my LMCE/0710 Core, copying it to the Core's local harddrive (probably with an LMCE GUI), then using an Orbiter to play the BD ISO file from the harddrive to my MD-connected TV (assuming my Core CPU and LAN are fast enough, that my TV-out does 1080P - and that I had 50GB free on by harddrive). Is that correct?

It was my understanding from what totallymaxed has said in the past, that although 0710 will not be able to play BD/HDDVD directly from the optical media due to the encryption schemes, that the scheme 0710 would use is to rip the content to hard drive, use a local decryption system and have the LMCE box do the work, then use mplayer to play it.

The only restrictions that seemed to be apparent when this was last discussed was the CPU power needed to process all that data, the disk space required (although it only need be temporary, I guess) and the network bandwidth needed to stream it to MDs - certainly Gb required...

Is that right Andrew? So encrypted (normal) HD DVDs and BD should be fine? Certainly the copy protection keys have been circumvented since May last year, look at SlySofts AnyDVD product.

Final question, Andrew - if this is how it will work, will LMCE allow you to start playing the ripped movie before it has finished ripping, or do you need to wait for the whole disk to finish before starting? How long does that typically take?

Yes Collin you are correct the HD discs have to be copied to the Core first... they cannot be played direct from the HD optical drive. You cannot commence playback until the copy has completed. A special HD tool is provided to allow you to copy the discs to the Core. This tool currently does not reproduce the discs original menu system... but all video content on the original Disc is reproduced. The HD Disc copies are 40-50Gig

To be clear: what you're describing is my putting a standard Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) disc I bought on Amazon, like Blade Runner, into a BD drive on my LMCE/0710 Core, copying it to the Core's local harddrive (probably with an LMCE GUI), then using an Orbiter to play the BD ISO file from the harddrive to my MD-connected TV (assuming my Core CPU and LAN are fast enough, that my TV-out does 1080P - and that I had 50GB free on by harddrive). Is that correct?

Or maybe 0710 doesn't rip a BD to an ISO, but to some other files (that don't include the original BD menu system). But still, once ripped, can I use the Orbiter and MD/Hybrid to watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080P?

Or maybe 0710 doesn't rip a BD to an ISO, but to some other files (that don't include the original BD menu system). But still, once ripped, can I use the Orbiter and MD/Hybrid to watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080P?

Yes that is correct

Well that is quite cool. I presume that the original menu content on the BD (and HD-DVD) cannot run because LMCE doesn't have the operating environment that the BD drive has embedded in its HW, which is where that menu content runs. I suppose that's a function of the BD driver, which we won't see getting that access to the BD HW anytime soon. But I believe that Blu-Ray at least is just a Java VM. Which could mean that the entire BD could possibly run, menu content included, in a JVM running on the LMCE host. Does that seem plausible?

Or maybe 0710 doesn't rip a BD to an ISO, but to some other files (that don't include the original BD menu system). But still, once ripped, can I use the Orbiter and MD/Hybrid to watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080P?

Yes that is correct

Well that is quite cool. I presume that the original menu content on the BD (and HD-DVD) cannot run because LMCE doesn't have the operating environment that the BD drive has embedded in its HW, which is where that menu content runs. I suppose that's a function of the BD driver, which we won't see getting that access to the BD HW anytime soon. But I believe that Blu-Ray at least is just a Java VM. Which could mean that the entire BD could possibly run, menu content included, in a JVM running on the LMCE host. Does that seem plausible?

Yes I think that is likely to be the case in the future... when I can't say though.

Or maybe 0710 doesn't rip a BD to an ISO, but to some other files (that don't include the original BD menu system). But still, once ripped, can I use the Orbiter and MD/Hybrid to watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080P?

Yes that is correct

Well that is quite cool. I presume that the original menu content on the BD (and HD-DVD) cannot run because LMCE doesn't have the operating environment that the BD drive has embedded in its HW, which is where that menu content runs. I suppose that's a function of the BD driver, which we won't see getting that access to the BD HW anytime soon. But I believe that Blu-Ray at least is just a Java VM. Which could mean that the entire BD could possibly run, menu content included, in a JVM running on the LMCE host. Does that seem plausible?

Yes I think that is likely to be the case in the future... when I can't say though.

I am really glad that LMCE will offer me the ability to actually use the content on BD that I paid for, even under Linux. FWIW, my Blu-Ray player is my PS3, which runs Ubuntu and now has an accelerated MPlayer driver using the Cell's DSPs.

Though I don't see that the PS3's embedded BD-J (Blu-ray Disc Java) support is exposed to Linux (probably locked out by the PS3 Hypervisor just like the RSX is), BD-J is a J2ME CDC. As is DVB. Maybe there's something in the new DVB support in LMCE 0710 that could also support BD-J... And maybe that kind of convergence also means that a "Mobile Orbiter" in Java, rather than targeting just Symbian 60 phones, is the future for mobile access to LMCE (and everything else LMCE opens up).

If we do this stuff right, it will just snowball. Especially now that Blu-Ray looks like the default HD storage format, now that Warner has left the HD-DVD camp.

can an image that is ripped to the hard drive, then be burned onto a disc that has enough space (HD DVD or Blu Ray i suppose) and then played directly from the disc?

Hmm... interesting question As far as I know, it is achievable, but currently not possible - because when you will insert this disk, the system will detect the "HD/BD media" and will ask you if you want to rip Kind of loop situation. I think it is possible to change this behavior later.

But I believe that Blu-Ray at least is just a Java VM. Which could mean that the entire BD could possibly run, menu content included, in a JVM running on the LMCE host. Does that seem plausible?

From what I know, the Blu-Ray is truly a Java VM plus some libraries providing the general support - last time I was reading about that somewhere on www, it was said that BD-player implements the Java TV API, so I suspect that to make the BD menu system run on Java host, we would need not only the Java VM, but also the missing libraries, and layer implementing Java TV API (e.g. wrapper around MPlayer that will expose this API (play/pause/etc./whatever.) to Java applications). The libraries and API are completely not implemented.